Resources for researching Greek and Hebrew

You didn't indicate your budget (approximately). In theory, absent a budget, one of the greek expositors commentaries would be good or the UBS Handbook is also very usable.

But given your long-term responsibilities an greek grammar which Logos ties to the text is probably the better choice. I use 3 of the better known ones. Many will have suggestions though (for sure!).

Welcome to the forums!!

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463160#Comment_463160

Thank you for the quick reply, DMB. As far as budget is concerned, I'm
starting off pretty small. I actually started off with the purchase of the NAS Electronic Bible Library and am hoping to find one or two reference tools to add to it at this point that will allow me to identify, at a minimum, original language verb tenses. For example, I'd like to be able to see in a given verse, not only the Greek or Hebrew word that a given English word was translated from but also the verb tense used in the original language.

I like the idea of something tied into the text. What are the grammars you use, and how exactly do these work? I am open to things not tied into the text as well, though, as long as they give me the ability to identify the original language specifics for a given verse.

Thank you again,

Paul

Nord Zootman

In a number of the English translations (ESV, NASB, etc.) you can simply hover over the word and it will show you that information at the bottom of the window. If you have the information panel open it will give you more. You can access that by going to tools and clicking on information.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463163#Comment_463163

Thank you for the quick reply, DMB. As far as budget is concerned, I'm starting off pretty small. I actually started off with the purchase of the NAS Electronic Bible Library and am hoping to find one or two reference tools to add to it at this point that will allow me to identify, at a minimum, original language verb tenses. For example, I'd like to be able to see in a given verse, not only the Greek or Hebrew word that a given English word was translated from but also the verb tense used in the original language.

I like the idea of something tied into the text. What are the grammars you use, and how exactly do these work? I am open to things not tied into the text as well, though, as long as they give me the ability to identify the original language specifics for a given verse.

Thank you again,

Paul

I would recommend that you avoid the interlinears completely since they will retard your learning of the language. The reason for this is quite simple—if you have a language you don't know very well with a translation immediately beneath it in a language you do know, where do you think your eyes will go? It takes real effort to concentrate on a language you don't really know when there is an easy path right before your eyes. I would recommend Futato, Beginning Biblical Hebrew. It is so simple to follow that you don't, or almost don't need an instructor (Read it and weep, Hebrew teachers [:D]). I would also recommend that you get the Hebrew Bible Insert which will give you all of the forms in the paradigm section. While there are "weak verbs" in Hebrew which basically follow certain patterns and might be compared to irregular verbs (though they are regularly irregular). From that you can learn the basics without investing too much dinero (That's money for anyone who lives in Rio Linda). When it comes to Hebrew texts, we have a problem (even without Houston). The text is being brought out in a new version (Biblia Hebraica Quinta). The Richter morphology is pending publication, but the two current morphologies are the Andersen-Forbes and the Westminster 4.2. I'm afraid you are going to end up buying a Hebrew text only to need to replace it before too long. I was a Greek major in college and learned classical Greek first so I'm not really that familiar with beginners' material for Greek in Logos. The only reason I know about the beginners' material in Hebrew is that the OT is my area of specialization. You will have a similar problem of text in Greek. The NA28 is coming out and isn't that much different from the NA27 (in the Catholic epistles). There is also a Greek New Testament Insert which will give you a brief summary of the verbal forms. Eventually you'll want to move on the the heavy-duty grammars, but I recommend baby steps at first. Also, always invest in a top-knotch lexicon. Don't rely on something like Strong's since those are simply glosses used by the translators of the Authorized Version in 1611—our knowledge of the languages has advanced just a bit since that time. If you want to translate it the way King Jimmy's men did, why not just read what they did?

Ken McGuire

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463163#Comment_463163

The first thing that it sounds like you would want is a morphologically analyzed text. There are multiple ways to do this. Probably the cheapest in the long run is to get a base package. http://www.logos.com/comparison shows you the options. You are looking for resources in either the first category, if you can go just from the original languages, or for a Reverse Interlinear based on an English text. This will display all the parsing information you desire for every word. Of course, it shows you the way an "expert" did it, and that is a bit of an interpretation...

There are tools like the UBS guides mentioned that have worked out much of this in detail, as well as more concise guides (like Max and Mary). But the power for this kind of information in Logos comes from the Exegetical Guides, which can search any grammar you have (including heavy-weights like Blass-Debrunner-Funk if you have the license) for any references to the passage.

SDG

Ken McGuire

Paul, you're kind of between a rock and a hard place. Using lexicons, reverse interlinears, and morphologies largely repeat just looking at multiple translations (as George hints at).

In between preparing your studies and lessons for others, I recommend two greek books:

http://www.logos.com/product/4225/a-greek-grammar-of-the-new-testament-and-other-early-christian-literature This is a good descriptive grammar, explaining greek, the NT version of it relative to other greek, and then 'how the language works'. It's very readable and also very amenable to 'a little at a time' if you don't wish to dive into 'greek'.

http://www.logos.com/product/6549/nunn39s-syntax-elements-and-key-to-the-elements-of-new-testament-greek This is a bit older. Its value is if you want a simple lesson by lesson course that you can follow along within your own time constraints. The Logos version is actually 3 books as if you're in class.

On the hebrew side, the problem is a little more complicated, since reading it is a bit more of a challenge. You really can't move into hebrew without learning the letters etc (greek is more obvious). But if you're up to it:

http://www.logos.com/product/4228/beginning-biblical-hebrew This is a nice easy to follow book, though it does move you into hebrew writing fairly quickly so be prepared mentally for that. It's very visual, so you can see the various relationships as you move through each step.

http://www.logos.com/product/698/a-biblical-hebrew-reference-grammar This is a more descriptive volume, but it's also very helpful when you're reading about an unusual aspect of hebrew. It goes into some depth on these. I like it a lot.

Whichever you choose of the grammars (there are many if you search Logos.com), they're all keyed to the Bible text. So if you do an exegetical guide or passage guide, Logos will look for any of your grammars that discuss the passage you're studying. Very handy.

Logos page on greek: http://www.logos.com/greek

Logos page on hebrew: http://www.logos.com/hebrew

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463172#Comment_463172

Probably the cheapest in the long run is to get a base package. http://www.logos.com/comparison shows you the options.

Probably correct, but your budget may dictate that you buy things piecemeal.

You are looking for resources in either the first category, if you can go just from the original languages, or for a Reverse Interlinear based on an English text.

I repeat:

Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,
never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never use an interlinear. You will do yourself considerable harm in learning the language if you do so.

Vincent Setterholm

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463170#Comment_463170

the two current morphologies are the Andersen-Forbes and the Westminster 4.2

The Lexham Hebrew Bible is pretty fresh. [;)] (Conversely, the Westminster 4.2 is actually rather long in the tooth, but I just had a meeting with a developer who's fixing our last morph bug/ticket for supporting the BHW 4.16, so there should be an update coming out in the not-too-distant future.)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463182#Comment_463182

Thank you, everyone, for your feedback. I appreciate the product recommendations, and it looks like there are some good suggestions here for helping me to better understand the grammar of the original languages. Having said that, I'm still a little unclear as to what resources will simply help me identify the Greek or Hebrew verb tense or the type of preposition used in a particular passage. From there, I could then go to some of these other resources to understand those verb tenses and preposition types better. However, what is a good baseline resource that will simply identify the verb tense or preposition type in a given verse. If it can integrate with the Bible text (i.e., the NASB that I purchased) that would be ideal, but I am also open to resource suggestions that would require me to look up a reference within them directly.

Thank you again,

Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463191#Comment_463191

Having said that, I'm still a little unclear as to what resources will simply help me identify the Greek or Hebrew verb tense or the type of preposition used in a particular passage.

The Hebrew / Greek Bible inserts I mentioned will help you to identify the forms. They are not particularly helpful with prepositions, but the Greek insert does have a useful section on identifying conditional sentences (very concise). By looking through the paradigms you will be able to see what it is in each form which distinguishes it from others though it will not detail the significance of these forms. For that you will need a grammar. As I noted, for a Hebrew beginner I recommend Futado's book since its presentation is very clear. I'm not sure whether Logos publishes anything for Greek with a similar presentation. For Greek Smyth's Greek Grammar is very worthwhile. Though it is geared toward classical Greek, it is also useful for Koine (the period of the NT). In college I would spend several hours each night pouring over Smyth (until 3:00 am quite frequently).

Adam Rao

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463191#Comment_463191

Paul,

As was mentioned above, the Interlinear feature already does what you're asking. For example, in the attached image, I can easily see what the Greek word underlying "is" in Galatians 5:23 is, as well as its parsing - Verb, 3rd Singular, Present Active Indicative.

It seems to me that what you're looking for is a tool/resource that will help you understand what a "Verb, 3rd Singular, Present Active Indicative" actually is and how it might be functioning. Yes?

If so, (a) you're going to have to learn a little bit of Greek and (b) you need Dan Wallace's book Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. Wallace's text provides copious amounts of information about the tenses, voices, and moods of verbs. It's a lot to take in, but if you have some Greek, you can probably manage to use it quite helpfully.

For that little bit of Greek, I recommend Bill Mounce's Greek for the Rest of Us. (This isn't available for Logos yet, is it?) Working your way through that will help you immensely and probably give you the skills you're looking to have without having to go through a full-fledged Greek language course.

Hope that helps.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463199#Comment_463199

Hi Adam,

Thank you for your response. Please note that, I
currently only have the NAS Electronic Bible Library in my Logos
resource collection. What is the resource I would need to add to this to
use the interlinear function you refer to in your screenshot? I don't
believe this comes with the free software, but let me know if I'm
missing something.

Thank you,

Paul

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463201#Comment_463201

http://www.logos.com/product/28576/logos-4-minimal-crossgrade (it's NOT included in the Logos5 minimal crossgrade).

Even though it's labeled 'Logos4' it works fine in Logos5. If you scan down you find the NAS reverse-interlinear (plus a whole lot more). This is probably your cheapest solution to your question. (George will kill me, with these screen shots.) If you hover your mouse over the morphological tags, Logos provides the definition.

And another view of the same resource:

Vincent Setterholm

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463191#Comment_463191

Having said that, I'm still a little unclear as to what resources will simply help me identify the Greek or Hebrew verb tense or the type of preposition used in a particular passage.

If you want integration with an English Bible, then Reverse Interlinears do exactly what you're asking for: they provide lexical and morphological information at the word level. If you just want to have Greek and Hebrew Bibles open next to your NASB, then you want to look for morphologically analyzed texts, which put the same type of lexical and morphological tags on the Greek and Hebrew Bibles. Because of the way that Reverse Interlinears are tied to the underlying texts, using those in parallel with the morph texts lets you do things like highlight words in one resource and see the corresponding text in the other highlighted, which makes moving back and forth between those resources easy.

I think the Reverse Interlinears are all in the Logos 5 base packages right now, rather than sold stand-alone, because they have rights dependencies on the both the surface texts and the underlying morph texts.

Armed with RIs, morph texts, or both, then the Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology (also in the base packages) comes in handy, as it gives a short definition of each term in the morph databases (AFAT has a separate glossary) and for the Hebrew and Aramaic that you can read hovering over morph terms in the search UI or in the word-for-word section of the exegetical guide, and it has links to some of the grammars for reading more about the phenomenon tagged (well, my copy has them - your copy will either today or early next week, whenever the button gets pressed to ship the update).

From there, you'll eventually want a lexicon or two and a grammar or two or seven. For lexicons, you can't do much better than the BDAG/HALOT bundle to get started. These lexicons have more information than just simple glosses and interact with all the morphological terminology that you're wanting to look up in the texts. For grammars, on the Hebrew side van der Merwe's BHRG, Waltke & O'Connor's IBHS, Joüon-Muraoka and Gesenius-Kautsch-Cowley are the four I turn to most often. All of these are available in Logos and some are in the base packages. On the Greek side, Wallace, BDF, Robertson (older but rather encyclopedic) are just a few of the many available.

If you're interested in a bigger picture view of how the biblical languages work, you might also look at the Steve Runge's Discourse Grammar and related Greek and Hebrew databases. The base packages also have a number of syntax databases and graph/tree visualizations of the syntax of the biblical texts.

Hope this helps.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463199#Comment_463199

If so, (a) you're going to have to learn a little bit of Greek and (b) you need Dan Wallace's book Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics. Wallace's text provides copious amounts of information about the tenses, voices, and moods of verbs. It's a lot to take in, but if you have some Greek, you can probably manage to use it quite helpfully.

I would not recommend Wallace as being your best choice. Wallace has a tendency to give clues for how to understand the use of certain words by appealing to how you would translate it. If you are going to rely on how you would translate a passage, you have alread made a decision regarding the form.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463201#Comment_463201

What is the resource I would need to add to this to use the interlinear function you refer to in your screenshot?

I repeat. NEVER use an interlinear. I assure you that you will regret having done so since you will forever be dependent on an existing translation.

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463205#Comment_463205

Thank you, DMB! I know George will not be thrilled with this either, but it looks like this initial package has a lot to get me started at a fraction of what it would cost to get this in the Logos5 packages. If I purchase this package and upgrade to a different package at a later date, do you know if Logos deducts the cost of the items I already have in my library, or do I have to pay the full value of the package upgrade?

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463217#Comment_463217

Ok Paul. George now hates me for sure.

With the Logos5 introduction, Logos began giving credit in their pricing for earlier purchases. So your risk should be minimal. And as in the discussions above (George and Vincent being the most authoritative), you'll hopefully expand your studies to all the other wonderful possibilities in Logos.

Adam Rao

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463217#Comment_463217

Paul,

I don't know if Logos will apply the price of the Logos 4 Minimal Crossgrade and/or the Logos 5 Minimal Crossgrade to a package price later on, but know that you're not alone – I'm going to be in the same boat as soon as they let me return Logos 5 Bronze and replace it with the 4 Crossgrade + 5 Crossgrade.

Adam Rao

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463212#Comment_463212

I would not recommend Wallace as being your best choice. Wallace has a tendency to give clues for how to understand the use of certain words by appealing to how you would translate it. If you are going to rely on how you would translate a passage, you have alread made a decision regarding the form.

George, what would you recommend instead? I've never cared for Mounce or Wallace because of their theological perspective, but I've never really looked for anything better, either. So, I'd love to hear if there are other options out there that I'm unaware of!

Philana Crouch

Check out Read Greek in 30 Days or Less: New Testament, Old Testament, Apocrypha, Philo, Church Fathers. The author simplifies learning grammar. You might also check out Kairos: A Beginning Greek Grammar with Workbook and Answer Key it is in several of the base packages (Silver and above) in Logos 5.

Justin Cofer

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463181#Comment_463181

I repeat:

Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never,
never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never use an interlinear. You will do yourself considerable harm in learning the language if you do so.

I absolutely agree. If you want to learn Koine Greek, develop it, to read it, then don't use an interlinear. I cannot tell you the pleasure of being able to read Koine Greek. Interlinears (and particularly reverse interlinears) are dangerous because (1) the readers eye reads the English underneath it. To use an illustration from Con Campbell, its like doing bicep curls without using your biceps. Its lame and a waste of time if you want to workout your biceps. If you are using an interlinear, you are not reading Greek. You are reading the English translation and then looking to see what Greek word underlies the English translation. That may be helpful for the ENGLISH Bible student, but its terribly crippling to the Koine Greek NT student if he or she decides to chain themselves to an English translation. (2) Its dangerous because it gives the reader a false sense of security regarding his or her grasp Greek grammar. Greek is not English. Reverse interlinears put the Greek words in English order which means the reader -- being chained to the English translation -- never has a chance to read the Greek NT as Greek rather than as a secret code which needs to be decoded into English. (3) It can put an unhealthy focus on the word level; -- rather than on larger units by which meaning is also communicated. The sum is greater than the parts. In summary, interlinears should never be used by anyone desiring to be a student of the Koine Greek NT. Interlinears are dangerous. Πεπεισμαι δε ἀδελφοι μου ὁτι διαβολου ἐισιν.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463214#Comment_463214

What is the resource I would need to add to this to use the interlinear function you refer to in your screenshot?

I repeat. NEVER use an interlinear. I assure you that you will regret having done so since you will forever be dependent on an existing translation.

Concur about not displaying Interlinear and Reverse Interlinear lines that mix up word order. Only one language in a tab can be displayed that keeps linguistical context.

Thankful for Interlinear and Reverse Interlinear resources that have morphological tagging so can use visual filter highlighting:

With verbs and some more highlighted easy to "see" Greek and English correlation along with context for each language.

Wiki has => http://wiki.logos.com/Extended_Tips_for_Highlighting_and_Visual_Filters#Examples_of_visual_filters

Favorite Greek New Testament => Lexham Discourse Greek New Testament

I would recommend Futato, Beginning Biblical Hebrew.

Michael Heiser has a web site companion => http://michaelsheiser.com/HWH.htm

Keep Smiling [:)]

Unix

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/463247#Comment_463247

I agree with George about interlinears - they are not useful + REALLY prohibitive for learning Gk. I agree about Wallace and Mounce, although I have Greek for the rest of us with standalone CD-ROM (my mom who studied exegetics 7 years ago borrows it to me).

Regarding grammars, I think George recommended: A Greek Grammar for Colleges:

For Greek Smyth's Greek Grammar is very worthwhile. Though it is geared toward classical Greek, it is also useful for Koine (the period of the NT). In college I would spend several hours each night pouring over Smyth (until 3:00 am quite frequently).

George, what would you recommend instead? I've never cared for Mounce or Wallace because of their theological perspective, but I've never really looked for anything better, either. So, I'd love to hear if there are other options out there that I'm unaware of!
I would not recommend Wallace as being your best choice. Wallace has a tendency to give clues for how to understand the use of certain words by appealing to how you would translate it. If you are going to rely on how you would translate a passage, you have alread made a decision regarding the form.

I have that, it was really cheap on pre-pub. It looks good. I would recommend it since it's good to have several beginners books to get past the novise phase:

Check out Read Greek in 30 Days or Less: New Testament, Old Testament, Apocrypha, Philo, Church Fathers. The author simplifies learning grammar.

Regarding lexicons, see for example the discussion in: What lexicon to use with UBS Handbook set? For Lk & Acts, the best lexicon is (LSJ) but it's also among the most expensive ones. Personally I'm not going to buy BDAG - I'm going to wait for the next Edition (if it comes with the same frequency as all the previous Editions it will come in 2021).